Every time your team members open a conversation with a new customer or prospect, the very first question they should clearly, enthusiastically ask each one is this:

“How did you find out about us?”

This gives you true, direct, voice-of-the customer feedback about what marketing is working and how well. You can also train your people to probe a little and find out not only how they heard about you, but if it’s a particular tactic or campaign they reference, find out what the liked about it, what they remembered most, and so on.

You can experiment with the wording, of course. You may prefer something like, “Thanks for coming in today. Say, How’d you hear about us?” or “Hey, could I ask how you first learned about us?” or “We’re glad to have you here, do you mind sharing, what brought you to us?” Whatever phrasing suits you best, with the goal to make it as conversational as possible. But the bottom line is, you, and your team, need to be in the habit of opening every new customer conversation with this type of very important question.

It could be the best market research you ever get!

I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half.”- John Wanamaker

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